In 2002, Carlota Perez wrote a book helping us understand major technological revolutions of the past 230 years. As I listen to people talking about how AI (and nuclear fusion, and DNA altering, etc.) will permanently alter our world, I just want to remind us that our human-centric world has been permanently altered many times over the past 250, if not 2,500, or even 2.5 million years.
It might seem like the most important time in the history of the world but I think that is myoptic and self-centered. It truly is an exciting and/or scary time (depending on how you view the world), but I believe we are just travelers along the journey of human development and in 100 years there will be an entirely new technology that is transforming the world in a way we cannot concieve of today.
In each of these revolutions, the workforce was permanently altered and methods of apprenticship, training, or teaching new workers also metamorphized. Land-grant colleges in the mid-1800s focused on education for agricultural, mechanical, and technical fields. Vocational training also entered the high schools. The academic field of engineering didn’t exist 150 years ago but entire schools, if not colleges, sprung up focused entirely on engineering. Computer science as an academic area of study is 60 years old (Purdue, 1962) and yet a major in it today results in some of the highest starting salaries after college. Literally the month I am writing this post, February 2024, the first Ivy League university announced the creation of an AI major (Penn).
“Perez is a British-Venezuelan researcher, lecturer and international consultant who studies the mutual shaping of technical change and society and the lessons provided by the history of technological revolutions for economic growth and development. She is working on a sequel, Beyond the Technological Revolution, which analyzes the roles that government, business and civil society play in the deployment of the potential of each revolution.” https://carlotaperez.org/
Deep Thoughts on Higher Ed 